Gravitas, Gravity and Grave Errors.

Thank you for lovely comments following my last post. The funeral was on Thursday and it was fairly harrowing, though also ended quite positively. Well, as positively as these things can be. But thanks, your supportive words mean a lot.

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It has been well-known for a while now that in areas of America, what used to be Science lessons are now being filled with the oddity that is the theory of Intelligent Design. Not evolution, oh no.

And now, thanks to the joy that is The Onion, we have a shocking new understanding of the world. It is not gravity... oh no, it is actually intelligent falling:

[...]
According to the ECFR paper published simultaneously this week in the International Journal Of Science and the adolescent magazine God's Word For Teens!, there are many phenomena that cannot be explained by secular gravity alone, including such mysteries as how angels fly, how Jesus ascended into Heaven, and how Satan fell when cast out of Paradise.
[...]

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Every week I love to receive my World Wide Words email newsletter. It contains info on new words and phrases (paternal discrepancy), weird words and phrases (Ignivomous - Vomiting fire), questions on language and word issues. There is also the Sic! section, which even if I don't have time to read the rest of the newsletter, I always make time for. Readers from all over the world send in examples of tenuous, dubious and hilarious uses of language. Some are errors, others are missing clarity, and others are complete nonsense.

My favourite this week:

Last Saturday, as Bernard Robertson-Dunn pointed out, a sub-editor
wrote a remarkable headline over a story on the Web site of the
Independent: "US editor ignites evolution row at Smithsonian over
editor institute mithsonian engulfed by row over evolution at
centre of row over evolution." Whatever he's on, can I have some?
[The headline has since been corrected to the prosaic "US editor
ignites evolution row at Smithsonian".]